of the people who voted early in ohio 2008 they favored barack obama over john mccain by nearly 60/40. so early voting was a great thing for the democratic side the last time barack obama ran for president. if you're a republican you can see the problem. when the republican party subsequently took over control of state government in ohio, they moved to shut down as much early voting as they could. ohio republicans first tried to cut early voting in half. democrats were able to block them on that so then they came up with a plan where only republican leaning counties would have weekend and week night early voting but democratic leaning counties would not have those hours. that was subtle. they didn't get away with that either. finally they tried to settle on all the counties in the state having the same early voting hours but early voting would stop throughout the state days sooner than it usually did. the last three days before the election including the all important last sunday before the election when african-american churches in particular typically organized their souls to the po